Қара Елдің Сөзі: Оглала Лакота дәстүрі мен руханияты

1932 book by John Neihardt
the song "Black Elk Speaks" by Hawkwind

Black Elk Speaks is a 1932 book by John G. Neihardt, an American poet and writer, who relates the story of Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota medicine man. Black Elk spoke in Lakota and Black Elk's son, Ben Black Elk, who was present during the talks, translated his father's words into English. Neihardt made notes during these talks which he later used as the basis for his book. The prominent psychologist Carl Jung read the book in the 1930s and urged its translation into German; in 1955, it was published as Ich rufe mein Volk (I Call My People). Reprinted in the US in 1961, with a 1988 edition named Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, as told through John G. Neihardt (Flaming Rainbow) and a State University of New York Press 2008 Premier Edition annotated by Lakota scholar Raymond DeMallie, the book has found an international audience. However, the book has come under fire for what critics describe as inaccurate representations of Lakota culture and beliefs.

In the summer of 1930, as part of his research into the Native American perspective on the Ghost Dance movement, the poet and writer John G. Neihardt, already the Nebraska poet laureate, received the necessary permission from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to go to the Pine Ridge Reservation. Accompanied by his two daughters, he went to meet an Oglala holy man named Black Elk. His intention was to talk to someone who had participated in the Ghost Dance. For the most part, the reservations were not then open to visitors. At age 13, Black Elk had also been part of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and he survived the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre. Neihardt recounts that Black Elk invited him back for interviews. Flying Hawk served as their translator. They have questioned the accuracy of the account, which has elements of a collaborative autobiography, spiritual text, and other genres. The Indiana University professor Raymond DeMallie, who has studied the Lakota by cultural and linguistic resources, published "The Sixth Grandfather" in 1985 including the original transcripts of the conversations with Black Elk, plus his own introduction, analysis and notes. He has questioned whether Neihardt's account is accurate and fully represents the views or words of Black Elk. Black Elk Speaks: The Complete Edition, 2014, University of Nebraska Press.

The book was adapted into a play by Christopher Sergel, John G. Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks, in the 1970s where it was staged by the Folger Theatre in Washington, D. C., and then taken on a national tour in 1978, and later restaged in 1992 with a revised version. Shortly after Sergel's death, his revised version of the play “Black Elk Speaks” opened in Jan. 1995. A Denver Center Theatre Company production, its actors included Ned Romero and Peter Kelly Gaudreault. One of the stage presentations was the first 'paying gig' for Wes Studi, with the lead played by none other than David Carradine.